Now I Know

Contents

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tom sets out to investigate the bizarre case of a body found hanging from a crane in a scrap-yard – a body which disappears.

Nik is researching for a film about a contemporary life of Jesus when he meets Julie, and they embark on a love affair which will involve a spiritual experience that will change them both for good.

Tom and Nik's investigations finally bring them together in an unexpected climax to a powerful and thought-provoking book.

PREVIEWS

Stars spinning

he points the compass.

His hands bear the universe.

A man jogs round the curve of earth,

white shorts and sweating white sweater.

He breathes cloud embryos into the dawn,

seeing only the narrow path.

Again Nik sees her

striding behind her antinuke banner,

grinning, drenched.

(But not marching, not her, ever.

Process, yes; belong, protest, yes.

But never march against marching.)

No matter all those other hundreds

Loved on sight

Of all her.

The explosion lifts him up

hurls him down

a crotch-hold and body-slam.

Out.

Conditioning him for death.

Tom said to the duty officer, ‘I'm on the crucifiction, sarge.'

‘Super's off his head,' the sergeant said. ‘Set a kid to catch a kid.'

‘That your guess?'

‘Kids anyway. Take more than one to do a thing like that.'

‘What about the one they strung up?'

The sergeant consulted a report. ‘According to the only witness, he's about seventeen.'

‘Where's he now?'

‘Gone.'

‘Gone!'

‘Vamoosed.'

‘How come?'

‘You're the one playing detective.'

STOCKSHOT
:  
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

NIK
'
S NOTEBOOK
:   This by Simone Weil:

Hitler could die and return to life again fifty times, but I should still not look upon him as the Son of God
.

Good, that. Ms Weil quite someone. Also says we must get rid of our superstition about clock time if we are to find eternity. What does she mean? ETERNITY? Time no more?

Things happen one after the other, yes? Or do they? But that's not how we remember them, is it? I don't. I asked Julie. She doesn't either. Who does? Life only makes sense when it's out of order. Ha!

Also: Things happen simultaneously. Julie says everything is now. Making the connections is what matters.

Selah.

ALL WRITING IS DRAWING

IN THE BEGINNING

THERE WAS A YOUTH GROUP

who decided to make a film about

GOD

AFTERWORDS

no one could remember

how they came to make such a decision.

None of them could remember being concerned about

God at the time.

But for one of them

what happened is here

NOW

BEGINNINGS

There were three beginnings.

From the beginning, you see,

we are to be given our words' worth.

One evening, Nicholas Christopher Frome was lying idly in his bath when the thought struck him that eventually he would die.

He had of course thought this before. He is no fool.

But that evening it penetrated his consciousness with a terrible clarity. A clarity so pure, so undeniable that, despite the pleasant heat of the water, he turned cold inside.

What made the thought so terrible was not the knowledge of his eventual death, but the realization of the separateness of his being.

He was not, he understood completely for the first time, merely his parents' son, nor just any seventeen-and-one-month year old youth, nor simply another member of the multitudinous human race.

He was
him self.
A separate, individual, unique and self-knowing person who would one day snuff it.

I am not, he thought, anyone else. Only me.

The cold inside froze his body. He stared, amazed, at the bathroom's perspiring ceiling.

I am me, he thought, and one day this Me will come to an end. I shall not be.

His stomach curdled.

He sat up and spewed into his bathwater.

There is never one particular moment, one small event, whether in life or in a novel, that is the only beginning. There are always as many beginnings as anyone cares to look for. Or none at all of course. But when Nik was thinking afterwards about what happened, he decided that the moment when he sat up in his bath and spewed his guts out came as near to being the beginning of his story as any.

Thomas Thrupp. Keen, ambitious, a would-be chief constable and yet only nineteen. Naturally suspicious, he trusts nobody, not even his granny, possesses a certain dangerous charm, and is said to be at his best in tight corners. Tom would never throw up at the thought of his own death.

One morning Tom was summoned to his superintendent's office. Earlier that day a young man had been found crucified on a rusty metal cross. The cross was not stuck in the ground, after the manner of ancient custom, but was dangling from a crane in a scrap yard across the railway tracks from the centre of town.

The super believed a gang of yobs had perpetrated the crime and that a young copper might sus them out more quickly than an older man. So despite Tom's lack of qualifications he ordered him to investigate. Besides, the super reckoned him a likely lad, attractively hungry for success. What Tom lacked in experience he'd make up for in ruthlessness. The super admired ruthlessness as much as he admired desk-top efficiency. (There were no papers cluttering his desk, just a closed file, a calendar and a photo of his wife.) He had Tom marked out as good at both. Tom also reminded him of himself when he was a young plod. (The super could be very sentimental on occasion. Sentimentality is, of course, the flip side of ruthlessness.)

Afterwards, in the briefing room, Tom said to the duty officer, a man of years, ‘I'm on the crucifiction, sarge.'

‘Super's off his head,' the sergeant said, entering up the duty book.

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.'

‘Got all the confidence you need.' The sergeant sniffed. ‘Set a kid to catch a kid.'

‘That your guess?'

‘Kids anyway. Take more than one, a thing like that.'

‘What about the one they strung up?'

The sergeant consulted a report. ‘According to the only witness, he's about seventeen. Five-eightish. Short brown hair. Thin face. Pale, but who wouldn't be under the circs. Slim build. Bony. Attired only in his underpants. Dark blue y-fronts with white edging. Very natty.'

‘Marks and Sparks,' Tom said, scrupulously jotting the details into his notebook. ‘Could be anybody.'

‘Not quite,' the sergeant said.

‘Where's he now?'

‘There you have me.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Gone.'

‘Gone!'

‘Vamoosed.'

‘How come?'

‘You're the one playing detective.'

‘This kid was hanging there and we lost him?'

‘Quick on the uptake, I'll grant you that.'

‘Jeez!'

‘Could be him you're after.'

‘Very funny, sarge. What else is news?'

‘Wouldn't hang about if I was you.'

‘Another good one. On form today.'

‘Crack this, could make a name for yourself.'

‘That's what the super said.'

The sergeant grinned. ‘No slouch, our super. You fail though, and it'll be all your fault. Know that, don't you? Incompetent trainee officer ballses up, etcetera. You win, and the super takes the prize for daring use of bright young man. ‘Course, he'll let you bask in the reflected. Get your pic in the
Police Gazette
.'

‘You're a real encouragement, sarge.'

‘As I say, I don't think you need any. So long, lad. Givem hell.'

JULIE
:   Hello . . . hello? . . . one two three . . . Is it working?

[
Pause
.]

Dear Nik, this is a Julie tape-letter. It's all Nurse Simpson's idea. Blame her. She's hung a microphone from my bedhead. She says all I have to do is talk quietly and the microphone will hear me. Which is just as well because I can't do much else but talk quietly.

So now, though I can't write to you, Nik, I can talk to you. And if you want to reply in the same way, Simmo says she'll put headphones on me so that only I can hear what you say. But it'll be a slow-motion conversation because of the post. And you won't be able to interrupt and answer back.

[
Pause. Tape surf.
]

I still can't see. My eyes are still bandaged. Most of me is still bandaged. I feel like a shrink-wrapped jelly-baby. The consultant says I'll be like this for a few days yet. In doctor's language I think ‘a few days yet' means ‘for a long time yet'. But she sounds nice. She has a gentle middle-aged voice and is sometimes with a squad of young students who go very quiet when they reach me. Simmo says that's because I'm such a knockout, but I know the sort of knockout I must be, and so must you.

Which reminds me: thanks for coming to see me. All that way! Why couldn't it have happened nearer home? There can't be much to see of me either, wrapped up the way I am. And wires and tubes and gear hanging off me as if I were one of Frankenstein's monsters in the making.

In fact, I don't feel I have a body any more. I feel more like a mind inside a carcass. Just now, all I am is a mouth saying words because I've just guzzled the dope they give me to kill the pain and keep me docile. I can't even feel my body. It might as well not exist. So I'm having an identity crisis. How do you know who you are if you've no body to speak of? I'm working on the answer. I'm nothing but words in my head all day. And dreams all night. Sometimes harsh words and usually horrible dreams. They say the dreams will go away, but what about the words?